


Just a Day or Two

by Harpokrates



Series: Little Lies [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-22 15:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22285318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harpokrates/pseuds/Harpokrates
Summary: Boba Fett considers his new bounty.
Series: Little Lies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596328
Kudos: 56





	Just a Day or Two

"You sleep here." Boba pointed into the recently cleared out storage closet. There was a cot, and an empty detonator crate. Skywalker glanced around the room through a blackened eye.

"How… austere."

"There's room in the stasis cells."

Skywalker snorted and walked over to the cot, sitting heavily on it. "Beats the floor."

He flopped back and looked at Boba. "Can I decorate?"

If it kept him content until Imperial Center, he could paint the walls neon green.

"Don't take down any load bearing walls." Boba looked at him. Skywalker was skinny to the point of being malnourished, and about ten centimeters shorter than Boba. "There are rations in the galley."

"Thanks." Skywalker sat up and dragged his grimy feet onto the cot.

Boba looked at him. "I'll get you a pair of boots."

"What?" Skywalker sat up, then glanced down at his cut up feet. "Oh. I guess I didn't realize. Jabba didn't let us have shoes—it's hard to run across the dune sea in bare feet."

"Right." Boba turned and headed for his quarters. The Slave 1 really wasn't meant to hold two people long term. Dad usually slept in the pilot's chair while Boba napped in his bunk. He'd just have to get used to living with another person for a while. He entered his room and shut the door. Then, he went over to his comm station and dialed Bossk.

It took him a while to answer, and when he did, the image was fuzzy. He must have been using a mobile unit.

"Boba?" He hissed, blinking wearily. "What is it?"

"Nice greeting for your oldest friend." Boba said.

"It's three standard here." Bossk's tongue flicked out and licked his eyeballs. Boba grimaced.

"I'll make it fast. I need you to look up 'Skywalker' on the trackernet."

"You never call to chat." Bosk hissed, but rolled over and retrieved his datapad. "Nothing. Wait. Some human called Skywalker won the Boonta Eve Classic about thirty years ago."

"Podracing?"

"Yeah. Riveting stuff. Can I go back to sleep now?"

"One more thing." Boba drummed his fingers in the console. "You know anyone who can alter Republic records?"

Bossk raised a scaley brow. "That's a tall order, Boba. Republic records are archived. What's this about?"

"I have a bounty for the Empire."

"Ah." And there was the crux of it. "Boba, Kamino clone records are totally sealed. I don't even think the Emperor himself can touch them."

Boba sighed. "Worth a shot. I'll call you later."

"Yeah." Bossk closed the connection without preamble.

Under Republic law, Kamino clones existed on the same legal level as droids, only they couldn't be bought and sold the way droids were—they were permanently owned by the Grand Army of the Republic, which didn't exist anymore. Boba existed in a legal limbo—being one of the few, if not only, clones of Jango Fett floating around these days.

Clones were classified next to Wookies as non-sentient by Imperial standards, which put him in an odd position in the otherwise human-centric Empire.

A-008 couldn't be a bounty hunter, because by definition, he was owned and employed by the GAR. The Guild wouldn't take him even if he wanted to join, and the Empire wouldn't let him in the bounty office, if they didn't arrest him for being a deserter (or for his pre-Empire record) first.

One million credits sitting in his storage closet, and Boba couldn't touch it.

True, there were probably other people who would pay that kind of money for a Jedi, but they were also the kind of people who would and could kill him the second Skywalker changed hands. The Empire was above ground, at least about their Jedi bounties. He'd gone with Bossk on one once. They'd both remained very alive, and a hundred thousand credits richer, after everyone took their cut—Trandoshans hunted in groups, and Bossk was very cautious about Jedi. That hundred thousand lasted him about five years. Bounty hunting was as expensive as it was lucrative.

He was stuck. In the meanwhile, there was no reason not to keep Skywalker around. Dad's modifications to Slave 1 were beyond Boba's understanding. He'd been there for most of them, but was usually too concerned with reading about spacecraft and scheming up new ways to convince Dad to get Taun We to let him borrow yet another book. He'd been banned from the library of Tipoca city after one of Dad's bounties tried to blow him up. Boba survived, but the datapad on local wildlife hadn't.

Boba closed his eyes. Thinking about this was making him maudlin.

He stood up and found an old pair of boots in his megar wardrobe. They were too worn to support the duraplast plating he wore over them, so it was no loss if they went to Skywalker.

When he returned to the former storage closet, Skywalker was gone. Boba's jaw clenched. He switched on thermal vision and followed Skywalker's footprints. They didn't lead towards the bay doors, or even towards the cockpit. Perhaps Skywalker was hungry?

Boba's foot clattered against an errant hydrospanner. Since when did he own a hydrospanner?

"Could you hand me that?" The Skywalker shaped red blur said, sticking out a slightly less red arm, that ended in blue fingertips. Boba turned off thermal and hefted the hydrospanner.

"What are you doing?" He said to Skywalker's legs. He was in the bulkhead to the waist, shoved uncomfortably through the access panel just above the stasis pods.

"The thrust engage was making a funny noise. One of the carburetors isn't catching on the primary motor."

Boba handed him the hydrospanner.

"Not to be rude," Skywalker continued, speaking loudly so he could be heard over the clanking, "but this ship is falling apart. When was the last time you had it overhauled?"

"Never."

"What? Ow!" There was a loud bang as Skywalker smacked his head on some tubing, before hauling himself out of the access. He rubbed his forehead and looked up at Boba.

"Can't let anyone know how my ship works. Trade secrets."

"And I can know?"

You won't get the chance to tell anyone, Boba didn't say. "You owe me."

"Ah." Skywalker shrugged before retreating back into the ship's guts. "You really need to rework your power output. I don't think the onboard computer can even handle hyperspace."

"It can."

"I doubt it." There was a thud, and a hiss, and that annoying grinding sound Boba was trying to ignore stopped. "There!"

Skywalker crawled out, grinning and covered in grease. "So, do I have the job?"

Boba blinked. "Fifteen credits a day, plus room and board."

"It's a deal," Luke stuck out his grimy hand. Boba shook it, then frowned. 

"There's a sonic shower in the head."

"That bad, huh?"

"Don't track grease through my ship. There's flammable things."

"Whatever you say." Skywalker tossed a hand up behind him.

Boba watched him. "Skywalker. Catch."

"Huh?" Skywalker turned too slowly to see the boots coming, but reached behind himself and caught them anyways. "Oh, thanks!"

"Sure." He didn't even know. Probably thought it was normal. Boba returned to the cockpit and sat in the pilot's chair, resting his chin on his hands and staring pensively out into the pitch black of space.

Questions and problems, and he had no answers to either of them. The only thing he could do now was wait.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't write these in order. The important ones will be published in order, but little ones like this will be added whenever.
> 
> Slavery is technically illegal in the Empire, for sentients. They got around this by declaring Wookies non sentient. There's also the whole indentured servitude thing (fancy way of saying slavery—if you can't leave you job there's a problem). But yeah. Clones don't really have human rights, do they?
> 
> I imagine if you take a job with the Empire, they'd be more concerned that you are who you say you are than the Hutts.


End file.
